Nameless
by ShortInsomniac
Summary: Floki is reunited with a mysterious but familiar man he has not seen in years, a man he had believed to be dead. His brother.


Nameless

Such a cold day it was. The wind howled through the trees ominously and the sea seemed to whisper. Floki found this unusually unnerving today. The sea usually spoke, he knew, but not this way. He stared off, searching. Searching, yes, but for what, he could not be certain. He pulled his coat tighter around himself and bent once more to hammer another plank into place.

He had been working for weeks on this new boat, trying to get the design just right. He knew that if he could get the angle of the bow just right, this ship would travel much more efficiently. He knew he could do that, at the very least; the real issue was making sure it would float….

The air suddenly fell still, and somewhere behind him, Floki heard the _crack_ of a foot falling crushing a stick as it trod over it. It was quiet, as though the person who bore the foot was trying to be as gentle and silent as possible. He turned to look, but there was no one. His eyes darted around the area curiously, but seeing nothing but the trees and the faint mist of his own breath, he went back to his work.

Within a few minutes, he had forgotten all about the noise and began to hum softly to himself, still thinking of the strangeness of the wind and the sea as their whispering picked back up.

" _Floki…_ " he thought he heard a distant, vaguely familiar voice say.

Certainly just the wind, he decided. He cleared his throat and crossed the short distance to another area of his work space where he had extra scraps of wood. As he searched for just the right piece, he smelled something. Death, he had pinned it, or rot. He couldn't quite place it, and he shook his head, his brow furrowed and nose wrinkled as he tried to push it from his mind.

"You stupid man," he scolded himself under his breath. "You are imagining things in your current state. It is not good for a man to go without sleep." He carefully tossed a board to the side and picked up another. "You are just tired, so everything seems –"

He stopped mid-thought as he saw a shadow pass through a section of trees to his left. Then he froze, completely still and silent, barely even breathing as he waited, waited for it to pass by again, but it did not.

"It's nothing," he told himself, and continued his search.

Just as he was turning to go back to his previous station, his head down, watching the ground below his feet, he heard the woods fall silent again, and a man's voice spoke:

"Hello, brother."

He looked up then to see a young man standing directly across the clearing, his dark hair neatly plaited, his thin, pale face oddly clean. The man wore clothing that looked fairly new and clean for being of a style nearly three decades old. There was a certain glimmer about this man's green eyes.

"Brother," Floki hesitated, trying to maintain a fearless stance as he walked with a false confidence back to his half-finished boat. "My brother is dead." He turned his back to this man, hoping to show him that he had no fear for him, and no respect for whatever joke he was playing. "And I have only one. You must be mistaken."

This was, however, the face of his brother. But as far as he knew, his brother was dead.

"As I was," the man said. Then he added, as though reconsidering his first statement, "Or, might have been."

Floki peered over his shoulder, eyes wide. "I do not understand," he said simply, fixing his face as he shifted to face the dark-haired young man.

"It is meaningless anyhow."

"Is it?" Floki asked, his voice nearly a whisper as he studied this man who claimed to be his dead brother. "Tell me, stranger, if you are my brother, what is it you ask of me? Why are you here?"

"I am here to…" His eyes wandered thoughtfully to the branches above him, then back to the shipbuilder. "…tell you goodbye, I suppose."

"Didn't you do that already? What – thirty years ago?"

"Twenty-seven," the man corrected. "But yes, I did. I thought that was the last time I would have a chance to see you, _Hrafna_."

"I see," Floki said uneasily, his heart nearly stopping when he heard what the man had called him. "Well, you look well for a dead man."

He did, in fact. This man, his brother, he was now certain he was, did not look as though he had aged a day since his death nearly thirty years before, and his body had been mutilated beyond repair that day. This man did not even have a scratch or a speck of blood or dirt on him.

"Thank you," he chuckled.

The man eyed the work on Floki's tables from a distance, craning his neck slightly to see and peering around Floki curiously.

"What are these for?" he asked.

"Ragnar wanted me to –"

"Still trailing after Ragnar Lothbrok like a dog, I see."

"I –" Floki wanted to argue, but he was too taken aback by such a bold, offensive statement.

"Some things never change, brother," he said with a shrug.

Floki changed the subject, just a bit agitated: "If you are here now, why must you say goodbye, if you don't mind my asking?"

"I cannot stay here, certainly," he man said as though it were so obvious.

"And why is that?"

"They would only kill me again for what I did – thirty-two dead and twenty of them children…Floki, that is an inexcusable crime, even for a Norseman," he answered, his voice almost songlike. "Or they would try to keep me for interrogation. They would want to learn the secret to my return, and I cannot have that."

"The secret to your return?" Floki repeated inquisitively. "Have the gods given you a second chance?"

"The gods?" he laughed impudently, earning a bewildered look from his brother. He sobered. "Forget I said it," he sighed, running a hand over his hair passively. "I just know I must leave."

"You could stay," Floki suggested. "Helga and I have enough room for one more."

"No," he shook his head. "Thank you for your kindness, but…I could not do that. I don't know how long before…No, I must go, Floki."

"Before what?" Floki was becoming increasingly confused; he did not understand a thing this man was telling him. All he knew was that his dead brother was somehow alive again, but that he must leave.

"I must go," the man said. "That is all."

"But…where will you go?" Floki inquired.

"Hm," he intoned, his eyes searching, scanning something in the distance. "West," came his simple response.

Floki paused, narrowed his eyes, and tilted his head forward. "West? There is nothing to the west."

Again, the man laughed. It was an eerie sound, even to Floki's ears.

"You know as well as I, brother, that that is far from the truth."

"You are crazy," Floki returned.

"Ah, but so are you." The man smiled. "It is a gift, is it not?"

"Insanity? A gift? You _must_ be insane."

"Thankfully so, for with insanity comes success, I've found."

Floki shook his head and opened his mouth to question the man further, but he was cut off before a word even passed his lips.

"I'm going west, Floki." The man turned and started to walk off. "Perhaps you should, too."

"Wh –"

"I will tell you this: do not try to find me," his brother called, pausing about a quarter mile off. "For you may never see me again and I don't want you to waste your life trying. But maybe you shall. See me again, I mean. Even I am not sure."

Floki blinked once, and in an instant, both the man and the smell of death which Floki had almost forgotten were gone. The wind and the sea persisted in their conversation, but with much less perturbation. Everything was as if it had never happened, as if this man and all the uneasiness of the day had never occurred.

Floki laughed, and he went back to hammering the board into place.

"What are you laughing at, you silly man?"

He looked up to see Helga as she made her way down the same path by which his brother had departed.

"I saw my brother," he said.

She raised one eyebrow and cocked her head to the side, confused.

"Floki, your brother is dead," she said. "We both saw him killed thirty years ago."

"Twenty-seven," Floki corrected her.

"Wh-what difference does that make?" she asked him. "He has been dead longer than many of the village's warriors have been alive. That is my point."

"I saw him – didn't you? You must have passed him."

He looked past her, up the path.

"There was no one, Floki," she insisted, touching his arm. "You must have imagined it."

"I don't think I did," he said, shaking his head. "I couldn't have."

"Maybe just a ghost," she said, her tone hushed and comforting as she looked up at him, smiling sweetly. "Or a vision from the gods?"

"Perhaps," he said, realizing she would never believe the truth.

"You need to get some sleep tonight," she advised. "Hm? How about you put your work away early today and we go inside?"

"Fine," he nodded, pulling the cover over the first table. "That might be for the better. I couldn't possibly do proper work after that anyway."

"I will make dinner, and you can rest," Helga said, helping him with the second.

"You are so kind, Helga," he murmured, going over to a third and final table. "What did I do that the gods would think me so worthy as to send me someone like you?"

She did not respond. But then, she didn't have to. She simply smiled and linked her arm in his and walked with him up the path, back toward their home.

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

 **The idea for this fic came soon after I saw the new** _ **It**_ **movie. Bill Skarsgård (Pennywise/It) is Gustaf's (Floki) brother, and as Its origin is never specified by Stephen King, naturally I had the idea to make him Floki's brother.**

 **Floki has been my favorite character since he was first introduced in the series, and Gustaf Skarsgård has become one of my favorite actors. Bill is a wonderful actor, too, I noticed. I think they are both very beautiful, talented men, and both equally creepy actors (though Bill definitely has Gustaf beat in the "terrifying as hell" category, LOL).**


End file.
